The movie isn't trying to make a profound influence on your life, it just highlights the futility that many of us live in through humour, romance and violence.. This is obviously meant to be taken with a grain of salt (It's not as if Mendes was trying to emulate suburban life as closely as possible).The protaginist's profound moment of clarity is similar to the faux-profoundness of a movie like Office Space in this manner, it's done to be humourous. As for the romance, the effect of having the dysfunctional teen love is to contrast the maturty of the young people against the 'mature and developed' in their lives. Cartoonish is hardly an adequate description.